Microsoft offers H.264 plug-in for Chrome, queries Google on WebM

After creating one for Firefox, Microsoft has announced that it has released a …

Dean Hachamovitch, corporate vice president for Internet Explorer, today announced the launch of a plug-in for Google's Chrome Web browser that reinstates support for the H.264 video codec when used with HTML5's <video> tag. The plug-in will enable Chrome users on Windows 7 to view H.264 video, even though Google announced the decision to remove native support for the codec last month.

The reason Microsoft gives for creating these plug-ins is that since the underlying operating system includes native support for the codec in question, users should be empowered to view videos that use the codec—and that's regardless of their browser preference. The intent is to be pragmatic: most users are indifferent to the ideological or other reasons that surround video codecs and software patents; they just want to watch some video. If the operating system can ensure that the browser vendor's choices don't stand in the way of watching that video, Microsoft believes the operating system should fill the gap: the Firefox and Chrome plug-ins are the company's way of doing just that.

The company is also working to ensure that WebM HTML video will play back in Internet Explorer. Google is developing plug-ins of its own to provide WebM support to Windows and Internet Explorer 9, and Microsoft has worked with Google to help ensure the plug-ins work properly.

Serious concerns

What Microsoft isn't doing is developing or bundling a WebM plug-in itself. While announcing the plug-in, the company also outlined a number of questions and concerns it has regarding WebM: who bears the liability for any intellectual property risk associated with the codec, how will Google allow genuinely open engagement, and what the plan is to achieve the kind of consistent, widespread support that H.264 offers.

The first of these concerns is perhaps the most substantial: though Google insists that WebM is "open"—the company says that it owns all the necessary patents that cover the VP8 video codec, and that these patents are available on a royalty-free basis—assertions of "openness" count for little if a company makes a claim of patent infringement. Google offers no indemnification for costs incurred in such a lawsuit, meaning that anyone using, implementing, or distributing VP8 could be at risk (this is in contrast to Microsoft, which does offer users of its products indemnification against patent lawsuits).

WebM's supporters often point out that there have been no WebM lawsuits yet, as if this meant the codec was free of risk. Such claims ignore the practical realities of patent lawsuits. The JPEG image compression format was standardized in 1992. It was not until a decade later that a company first claimed that the format infringed on patented technology: between 2002 and 2005, when its patent was eventually invalidated, Forgent Networks sued more than 30 companies for patent infringement, and received more than $100 million for licensing the patent to another 30 companies. A second round of lawsuits was initiated in 2007 by Global Patent Holdings; its patent too was invalidated, in 2008.

Though the patents driving these lawsuits were both ultimately deemed to be invalid due to existing prior art, they were costly and time-consuming to defend against. And, importantly, they took a long time to emerge. That nobody has sued Google yet does not mean that VP8 does not infringe any patents; it simply means that nobody has sued Google yet. Nor, if the history of JPEG and GIF is anything to go by, are they likely to sue Google any time soon. History shows that the preferred technique is to wait until a technology is in wide use, and then sue many people for infringement, whether they are developers, distributors, or end-users. We wouldn't expect to see a lawsuit at this early stage; it would scare people off the format altogether, thereby reducing the likelihood of lucrative licensing deals and/or settlements.

Microsoft says that until the situation around intellectual property and liability is clear then it will remain agnostic towards the choice of codec. Internet Explorer 9 supports H.264 because Windows supports H.264; it will similarly support WebM with a suitable Windows plug-in. H.264 does open up the company to some risk, but it believes that this is a necessary risk (given the importance of H.264 support for things like TV and optical disc playback) and a small risk (given that many of the companies with relevant intellectual property have disclosed their patents already).

The company's own history in this area—many patent holders emerged from the woodwork when SMPTE worked to standardize WMV as VC-1—has led it to be cautious when it comes to WebM, but Microsoft recognizes that there is value in a codec that is well-protected against legal issues: H.264 appears to be that codec at the moment, but WebM could achieve that status with some help from Google.

The implication in the post is that if Google were to, say, indemnify developers and users of WebM, then Microsoft would be willing to take advantage of that indemnification by developing and/or distributing WebM support itself. Such a move would certainly enhance WebM's reach, but the ball is in Google's court.

The other concerns appear less important: it seems that Microsoft would prefer for WebM to be governed by a genuine standards body (rather than merely submitting a nonauthoritative document to IETF), and would like a better plan for how to give WebM the kind of ubiquity that H.264 enjoys. These are reasonable concerns, and certainly areas of improvement for Google, but are secondary to the patent liability question: only patent liability has the potential to inflict enormous costs on anyone using WebM. As long as Google fails to address them seriously, browser plug-ins and competition from H.264 are likely to remain a feature of HTML5 video.

Really? A whole article of FUD with no real substantive threat to WebM? Google doesn't indemnify users of WebM, but guess what; neither does MPEG-LA. Every single one of your objections applies to H.264. There could be patents H.264 infringes on. That nobody has sued MPEG-LA yet does not mean that H.264 does not infringe any patents; it simply means that nobody has sued MPEG-LA yet.

Again the same FUD, where does MPEGLA assure people that they will indemnify someone if a thirdparty patent is used against H.264? Google and MPEGLA have patents on WebM and H.264 respectively, both license their patents with different royalty schemes (Free and Paid). But neither of them will defend you against thirdparty patents from a patent troll, Why request from Google what MPEGLA does not gives to you?

The article makes a very good point about not suing until it is profitable to do so... In the case of H.264, it is now so widely used that if some entity wanted to sue they would have likely done it by now (or would do it sooner than later). You can't really argue the same about WebM... Also, why are people so emotional about this stuff? For once, Microsoft has a good point: people don't give a shit, they just want to watch videos...

Really? A whole article of FUD with no real substantive threat to WebM? Google doesn't indemnify users of WebM, but guess what; neither does MPEG-LA. Every single one of your objections applies to H.264. There could be patents H.264 infringes on. That nobody has sued MPEG-LA yet does not mean that H.264 does not infringe any patents; it simply means that nobody has sued MPEG-LA yet.

Uhm, I am pretty sure that's exactly what the MPEG-LA is doing. Before anyone can go after the licensees, they have to go after the MPEG-LA itself, and then they'd have to decide that it makes more sense to go after the licensees instead of asking for a cut of MPEG-LA already in-place licenses. If the purpose of a patent troll is to monetize your patents, playing with the MPEG-LA is a lot more profitable than going after individual licensees.

What Google is doing with WebM is saying: "Listen, we're not guaranteeing you anything. If someone wants to sue you for using this technology, they can go right ahead and do it. We ain't promising you anything, and we ain't protecting you." This is not exactly new. It's exactly what they do with Android, and is why Apple, et al...went after Motorola, HTC, etc...

You may like WebM, but YOU'RE the one spreading FUD if you think the legal situations are exactly identical so we should all just love WebM instead. It's not identical at all.

As far as I'm aware, Apple haven't even commented on WebM let alone come out against it.

I can't imagine Apple are thrilled about paying H.264 royalties to MPEG-LA any more than Google are, they just tend not to comment so much. Apple only have one patent in the H.264 licensing pool so it can't be a big earner for them.

Again the same FUD, where does MPEGLA assure people that they will indemnify someone if a thirdparty patent is used against H.264?

MPEGLA may not but Microsoft does for its use.

Right. I understand Microsoft worries about having to be prepared to indemnify two technologies instead of one, If they truly are ready to indemnify every user of their H.264 implementation, good for them, but they are not requesting to MPEGLA to do that for them, why Ars ask for it to Google everytime?

Indeed Google needs to institute an indemnification system in case of patent infringement suits. It's not really just a question of whether WebM is more vulnerable to these suits or not. It's simply a matter of standard business practices.

However, this goes to show how software patents can damage technological advancement in a free and open market. Microsoft can support such an indemnification system by drawing money from the royalties revenues. Google has no such revenues. It will need to somehow monetize WebM if it doesn't want to build an indemnification fund from other sources of revenue.

The threat of patent infringement is real, FUD or not. But it does not stop me from supporting VP8 and not support H.264 royalty-based codec. However, the lack of indemnifications can stop many implementors if they realize the risk and costs associated with a lawsuit are higher than the costs associated with the alternative royalty-based codec.

For this alone I think H.264 stands a better chance of becoming a de facto standard for web video. But it's a loss to everyone when the time comes we realize we gave way to royalty-based web standards, or worse, if one day the dominant and inevitable position of H.264 in the market makes its commercial interests realize they can push for higher royalties.

Agreed, with MPEG-LA, it's extremely unlikely that a patent troll would go after individuals. The situation for H264 is *completely* different than for WebM. With WebM, it's up in the air, although I do trust that Google has done some level of due diligence. Whereas I think someone who crawled out of the woodwork on H264, if they couldn't convince MPEG-LA to give them a cut, and they tried going after individuals, they'd get crushed. (and *probably* wouldn't even try)

If it works as well as the plugin for Firefox, I'll skip. I tried the Firefox plugin, and noticed a MASSIVE memory leak (despite never visiting a website with an H.264 video) where over the period of a day, the amount of memory used by Firefox would climb from about 250mb to over a gigabyte - and uninstalling the Microsoft plugin made the problem go away, without any other changes. I've googled around, and I'm not the only one experiencing this. No sign of a fix from Microsoft yet.

I was just thinking that the sentence reading "What Microsoft isn't doing is developing or bundling a WebM plug-in itself." is a bit out of place.

Whatever support Microsoft may want to give to WebM, they needn't develop a plug-in themselves, Google is doing that for browsers that don't support it (Safari / IE), and all of Firefox*, Chrome and Opera already support WebM.

I don't want to sound like a troll, but I was just thinking it's giving unnecessary bad rep for Microsoft. Whether they develop a plug-in for WebM is not the question at hand. It's whether they decide to support WebM on Windows/Internet Explorer that is important.

A much better way to describe Microsoft's stand would have been to use the following instead:"What Microsoft isn't doing is developing or bundling [WebM in Windows or Internet Explorer itself]. While annoucing the [H.264] plugin, the company also [...]".

I personally don't care if h264 works out of the box or with a plug-in but I do think it's a mistake to develop a browser and not include support for it.

Right now I think both Microsoft/Mozilla/Google's principals for their actions are all based on tit for tat arguments. h264 is going to win over WebM in the majority of websites although Google has a lot of control with Youtube under it's belt.

While the patent issue is the main problem with WebM adoption I must say I am disappointed that Google has yet to commit to making WebM a recognised open standard. Note, being open source does not make something an open standard. Ironically H.264 is an open standard, even if it is not open source.

Kudos to Microsoft for considering what makes practical sense to users first, and fixing what Google broke. I'm hoping Apple will come to a similar conclusion. Then I can just make sure my various boxen running Windows and MacOS X have the proper plugins and I can continue to enjoy the web seamlessly, as it should be.

Indeed Google needs to institute an indemnification system in case of patent infringement suits. It's not really just a question of whether WebM is more vulnerable to these suits or not. It's simply a matter of standard business practices.

However, this goes to show how software patents can damage technological advancement in a free and open market. Microsoft can support such an indemnification system by drawing money from the royalties revenues. Google has no such revenues. It will need to somehow monetize WebM if it doesn't want to build an indemnification fund from other sources of revenue.

The threat of patent infringement is real, FUD or not. But it does not stop me from supporting VP8 and not support H.264 royalty-based codec. However, the lack of indemnifications can stop many implementors if they realize the risk and costs associated with a lawsuit are higher than the costs associated with the alternative royalty-based codec.

For this alone I think H.264 stands a better chance of becoming a de facto standard for web video. But it's a loss to everyone when the time comes we realize we gave way to royalty-based web standards, or worse, if one day the dominant and inevitable position of H.264 in the market makes its commercial interests realize they can push for higher royalties.

Apple and Microsoft hold patents that are a part of the portfolio of MPEG-LA so they have a vested interest in its adoption. All else being equal they would much rather that mp4 wins and webm loses.

This is not a bad thing. People like to support adoption of things they invent.

This isn't Big Content we're dealing with. The IETF is an organization for the establishment of standards by engineers and scientists. Its contributors do important work. It is also expensive work, which is why it is backed financially by groups like the MPEG-LA, which collects compensation for this work from those who seek to use it in their own products.

It isn't predatory. It's supportive of the talents of the people who come together to make impressive things.

Meanwhile, Google didn't want to play in that sandbox, so they went and bought their own playground down the street. They have all the locks and keys, but they promise (no really!) that anyone can come over. But you can't bring your own toys, you have to use Google's.

I guess that's how it works when you have enough cash to do whatever you want. But it isn't "open" ... Its just kind of bratty.

Apple and Microsoft hold patents that are a part of the portfolio of MPEG-LA so they have a vested interest in its adoption. All else being equal they would much rather that mp4 wins and webm loses.

This has to be the most widely spread piece of FUD on the Internet at the moment. For the millionth time: Apple and MS spend much more money to license H.264 than they get back from it - therefore, they would save money if WebM magically took over all web video.

Also, mp4 is a container format based on Apple's old Quicktime format. The base format is patent free. Certain extra features are patented, but those are optional and essentially noone uses them, so the patent pool was disbanded. It has no connection to the WebM/H.264 discussion whatsoever.

Apple and Microsoft hold patents that are a part of the portfolio of MPEG-LA so they have a vested interest in its adoption. All else being equal they would much rather that mp4 wins and webm loses.

vaette has already posted evidence refuting the validity of this rubbish claim.

MS (and most likely Apple too) pay out far more than they get back in.

The link is pretty much irrelevant and doesn't contemplate the logic outcome of a World Wide Web on the backs of H.264; a time when the royalty revenues would be significantly (let me stress that again, significantly) increased.

Besides, regardless of the value of such revenues, there is clearly and undeniably a source of revenue. It's not that, out of the goodness of their hearts, Microsoft decided to relinquish from their right to a percentage of the royalties, thus helping keeping their costs lower. There's money here. Whether it is a lot or too little, is pretty much debatable. And it doesn't address the fact those values will fluctuate with time and levels of adoption.

@abbathdoom I've heard that before, but I think it is a moot point, what you mean when you say 'open standard' is gained by being open-source anyway. As I see it an 'open-standard' is worth almost nothing if this still means that (either in theory or practice) it would be possible for some party to charge license fees for an implementation.

While the patent issue is the main problem with WebM adoption I must say I am disappointed that Google has yet to commit to making WebM a recognised open standard. Note, being open source does not make something an open standard. Ironically H.264 is an open standard, even if it is not open source.

Stop that BS. The European Union's definition[1] of an 'open standard' is one that is royalty-free. The Open Source Initiative also lists royalty-free as a requirement[2]. Heck, even Microsoft defines an open standard as one that is royalty-free.[3]

@abbathdoom I've heard that before, but I think it is a moot point, what you mean when you say 'open standard' is gained by being open-source anyway. As I see it an 'open-standard' is worth almost nothing if this still means that (either in theory or practice) it would be possible for some party to charge license fees for an implementation.

You think people can't charge license fees for open source? Perhaps what you meant to say was "GPL" or "free (libre) open source"?

This is an interesting development. At the moment I use Chrome, but I was very upset with Google for choosing to drop H.264. I will be buying an AMD Fusion E-350 based notebook shortly, and naturally I will then want a browser that supports hardware acceleration. I have had more luck getting hardware acceleration to work in IE9 than in the latest Chrome builds, or by enabling lab features. Initially I just planned to stick it out, and I was sure Google would catch up with Microsoft in hardware acceleration in short order. Then this whole H.264 thing popped up, and gave me serious pause about continuing to use Chrome. Now, Microsoft has essentially fixed the issue that made me consider abandoning Chrome...

What does it all mean?!?!

Now I'm wondering if I should give IE9 a go again as it will be out of beta this month, Opera 11 is now out and has hardware acceleration, Firefox remains too hungry for my ram, but Chrome is now familiar and closing the gap... but can I ever really trust you again?

Upon further review, and rereading my post, I've decided to give up the internet in favor of dating. Goodbye Ars.

"The reason Microsoft gives for creating these plug-ins is that since the underlying operating system includes native support for the codec in question, users should be empowered to view videos that use the codec—and that's regardless of their browser preference. The intent is to be pragmatic: most users are indifferent to the ideological or other reasons that surround video codecs and software patents; they just want to watch some video. If the operating system can ensure that the browser vendor's choices don't stand in the way of watching that video, Microsoft believes the operating system should fill the gap: the Firefox and Chrome plug-ins are the company's way of doing just that."

This is the most level headed response about the subject yet. Google's decision to remove an already shipping feature is asinine and does nothing to help end users

What I find amazing is that people are up in arms that a certain amount of the price of a computer product might have to go towards paying for a patent.

Guess what? You do it everyday. You can be sure that a percentage of everything you pay for on a daily basis goes to some patent or other: car engines, dish soap, chewing gum... All products or their manufacturing incur cost due to patents.